Product Development Engineer

Product Development Engineer

Position at Attindas - US Attindas Hygiene Partners designs, manufactures, and markets absorbent hygiene products. The company sells adult incontinence and infant diapers, among other products, into the healthcare, retail, and direct-to-consumer channels under brands including Attends, Indas, and Comfees as well as a wide range of private label brands for retailers. Mission: We champion health, dignity and comfort. Vision: To be a global leader in absorbent hygiene by meeting consumers' diverse needs through effective, affordable and widely available personal care solutions. Our Values: Personal, Agile, Innovative, and Integrity

Job Summary: The primary responsibility of the Product Development Engineer is to drive value for their designated category by creating and improving product designs that deliver against the category strategy. This person will be the product lead on projects with increasing complexity and participate/ lead in project cross functional teams. The designer is to navigate the tradeoffs between satisfying and exceeding the market consensus (category trends, consumer insights, customer requirements, margin/revenue growth aspirations, etc.) and the internal operational consensus (efficiency, cost, capacity, service, etc.) by creating and improving product designs that meet the business needs. This role will also oversee research and design activities, support claims substantiation, direct machine trials and testing procedures. An individual for this role is expected to understand the competitive environment and bring innovations to the organization that ultimately launch into market success.

Key responsibilities:

• Execute against the category strategy in collaboration with cross-functional teams. The category roadmap is a balance between innovation, cost and continuous improvement projects.
• Drive innovation and product improvements that keep products relevant and competitive within the marketplace. Lead these product changes from concept to commercial implementation. Expected to provide technical evaluation of product, understand the accompanying process and necessary equipment, intellectual properties, and generate product costing and specifications for new product designs.
• Participate in cross-functional product teams. Assist in the development and qualification of new product features and upgrades with a focus on delivering project on schedule and within budget.
• Participate in product evaluations. Includes bench evaluation, product fit simulations and consumer testing.
• Prepares developmental machine trials to qualify new product concepts and materials. Work with business support teams to execute.
• Participates and presents in various meetings and forums.
• Controls, Owns, and Manages the Finished Product Specification and Raw Material Specification Systems.
• Works with material suppliers to understand new technologies and materials that are suitable and desirable in our finished products.
• Support the sales and marketing functions with customer meetings and technical requests.
• Support all additional task as follows: Fulfill test requests from insights, product design and commercial teams. Coordinate the testing with quality department and/or conduct specialty tests. Deliver results on schedule, coordination of product repack, shipping, quality testing, product release, and data entry/ analysis for consumer panel testing.

Required Qualifications:

• 2-3 years of experience in product design/ development
• Technical Bachelors Degree (ME or ChE preferred)
• Demonstrated history of delivering/ launching product development projects
• Knowledge of statistical techniques to make data driven decisions
• Aptitude and ability to understand complex manufacturing processes
• Ability to lead projects and utilize strong project management fundamentals/ techniques
• Ability to maintain multiple active projects/ responsibilities at the same time
• Knowledge of data storage, data reporting, and data analysis
• Knowledge of quality control techniques
• Detail oriented, ability to collect and organize data
• Demonstrated strong oral and written communication skills
• Proficient in MS Office

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience using product evaluation methods including bench testing, fit modeling, and consumer testing
• Knowledge of raw materials used in the disposable personal care products
• Knowledge of disposable personal care products converting processes
• Knowledge of absorbent hygiene test methods and lab procedures
• Experience with project management software (MS project, SmartSheet)

Attindas is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will be considered without regard to age, race, color, sex (including gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), marital status, religion, national origin, genetic information, disability, or veteran status.